Deborah Gorham chronicles Marion Dewar’s activism
How a mayor jumped in to help 4,000 refugees
Project 4000 was the City of Ottawa’s plan to welcome 4,000 Southeast Asian refugees — the “boat people” — to the Ottawa community in 1979 and 1980. Countrywide, some 60,000 Southeast Asians settled in Canada during that time, fleeing regimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Per capita, Canada took in more of these refugees than any other host country. Ottawa came close to the mayor’s target of 4,000, and again, per capita, Ottawa took in more refugees than any other Canadian community. This endeavour depended on the remarkable response of hundreds of volunteers from the Ottawa community. It also depended on the goodwill of the federal government. But above all, it depended on Marion Dewar. It was Dewar who launched Project 4000 in June and July of 1979, and she vigorously promoted it. As NDP activist and provincial politician Evelyn Gigantes remarked to me, “I ... remember with awe ... the magnificent way she challenged the community and the federal government with her campaign to bring thousands of Vietnamese refugees to Canada, almost all of them people who had supported the American role in Vietnam, which she opposed.”
Dewar had advocated for Project 4000 when she was mayor for only a few months. Many believed she rushed into this initiative too quickly. But as she said, “Yes. We could have had more information if we waited. We would have had a better indication if we’d studied the situation for two-and-a-half years, but in the meantime, a lot of people would be at the bottom of the ocean.”
The Southeast Asian refugee crisis began in 1975, but it was only in 1978 that it attracted the attention of the media in the non-Asian world. Moreover, although many refugees escaped overland to refugee camps in Thailand, it was the boat people — those who fled in flimsy craft, large or small, braving the treacherous South China Sea — who received media attention.
Marion Dewar and her husband, Ken, responded to just such media coverage. In June 1979, she and Ken were in the Laurentians, taking a long overdue weekend break. It was raining, so to pass the time, the Dewars started up a game of bridge with another couple. The television was on in the background. All four of them were drawn into what was on the screen: stories about people from Vietnam, fleeing their country in leaky boats, only to be refused landing and even pushed back into the water. In the 21st century, we are used to seeing distressing events of this kind on television screens or on the Internet. But television images of disaster were still uncommon in 1979. Accordingly, they had a greater impact than they might have now.
Marion Dewar sometimes described herself as ordinary, and indeed, her response to this crisis was that of an average person. She was horrified by the images she saw on television. Her visceral response to the plight of these people is one reason her shock and determination resonated with so many Canadians. She did not subject the media response to the sort of analysis one finds elsewhere. Instead, she acted. And in acting, she was anything but ordinary.
She had energy, commitment and an acute political sense, and as mayor she had power and moral authority. Havi Echenberg, Donna Holtom, and others assert that Dewar made the decision to launch Project 4000 on her own. She consulted Ken, of course. He would always be her most trusted confidant. Her first step was a meeting with community leaders on June 27. She invited religious leaders. She invited Ron Atkey, the federal immigration minister in Prime Minister Joe Clark’s newly minted government. She also invited people like Can Le, the dedicated and tireless president of the Vietnamese Community Association, who would later say, “Dewar’s political leadership was the key element that moved (Project 4000) forward.”
Minister Atkey could not come. In his stead, he sent a senior official, who argued that Canada had already done a lot, having just raised the Southeast Asian refugee quota from 4,000 to 8,000. It was at this point, apparently, that Dewar said, “Fine. We’ll take the other 4,000.” Project 4000 was born.
After the June 27 meeting, Mayor Dewar did consult with her staff and her political allies on city council. They planned for a city council meeting, which would be held on July 4. Dewar knew that it was crucial to obtain the support of council, and at that meeting she was successful in doing so. The council voted for $25,000 of funding for the project.
But she also needed public support. For this, she and her advisers planned a rally to be held at Lansdowne Park on July 12. The meeting proved to be an overwhelming success, although it was a gamble. One reason for its success was careful planning. In June, volunteers were enlisted and goals were formulated. Dewar put her friend and executive assistant, Donna Holtom, in charge of the rally. But many others were involved, including Dan and Barbara Gamble, the organizers of the successful Christmas Craft Fair.
Another reason for the success of the July 12 rally is that Dewar and her project received favourable publicity from the press. The Ottawa Journal and the Ottawa Citizen both praised the mayor, and both gave advance notice of the rally. The Journal editorialized on July 4, 1979, admiring Dewar’s “brave initiative.” It called the project “the most humanitarian gesture this community has demonstrated in many years.” And over the longer term, the consistent and persistent support of Russell Mills, editor of the Ottawa Citizen, would prove essential to Project 4000’s success. “She convinced me,” Mills told me.
The rally was an unforgettable event. Beforehand, devoted and skilled volunteers had set up the hall so that it would seat a few hundred people. They did not want it to look empty. But more and more people flooded into the Lansdowne space. No one knows how many people came, but it was perhaps as many as 3,000.
The program included Alan Breakspear as master of ceremonies. Breakspear was a remarkable humanitarian who was about to take over as the organizer of Project 4000. A group of young Vietnamese singers, organized by Can Le and his wife (she made the girls’ costumes), sang “O Canada.” Folksinger Bruce Cockburn performed on his guitar. The speakers included Catholic Archbishop Plourde, Anglican Bishop William Robinson, and Rabbi Don Gerber of the new Jewish Reform congregation, Temple Israel, who movingly reminded the audience that the doors had been closed to Jewish refugees after Hitler took power. This must not happen again, Rabbi Gerber insisted. Jewish Canadians responded across the country in greater proportion than their numbers in the population would suggest. Like Rabbi Gerber, Jewish Canadians and their organizations, including the Canadian Jewish Congress, responded by saying, “Not again.”
The final speaker was the mayor herself. By all accounts she was inspirational. “The audience rose in a standing ovation of clapping and cheers when Dewar walked to the microphone.” After the speeches were over, the crowd, which appears to have been overwhelmingly supportive, surged forward to sign up for volunteer work.
What were they volunteering to do? The 1976 Immigration Act allowed for private as well as government sponsorship of refugees. Project 4000 was designed to facilitate private sponsorship. There is considerable disagreement about whether or not the federal government had to be pushed to take in more refugees from Southeast Asia or whether, in fact, Joe Clark’s government took the lead. Flora MacDonald, then Progressive Conservative MP for Kingston and the Islands, served as secretary of state for external affairs in Clark’s government. Certainly Flora MacDonald’s own memories of her involvement in Project 4000 suggest that the federal government’s role was crucial. But others, like Dan Gamble, believed that Marion Dewar was the main mover and shaker: “No government could have contained Marion’s determination ... She inspired everyone else.”
The success of Project 4000 obscured the fact that there was always strong opposition to the project. Although Vietnamese-Canadian leader Can Le told me that he never met with unpleasant opposition, we do have a record of opponents. The City of Ottawa Archives papers on Project 4000 include a file labelled “Correspondence, Negative.” In the file are letters sent to Mayor Dewar, which express fears that the refugees will take jobs away from Canadians and worries about disease. “These people ... by numbers alone can and will take over the land from our descendants,” wrote one correspondent. Another said the mayor was “losing all sense of judgment ... these are not our people, and they are not our responsibility.” Paul Dewar remembers hate calls made to his mother at home.
Mayor Dewar’s staff and the mayor herself took these letters seriously. In her standard response she said, “Naturally I am disappointed that you do not share my views ... but I can assure you the majority of people do.”
Marion Dewar doubtless believed this to be the case, but she was in fact wrong. Canada-wide, there was opposition to the Southeast Asian refugees, and the opposition increased over time rather than diminished. Dewar did everything she could to address this issue. She carefully answered the hostile local correspondence, and she spoke in person and on the radio about generosity, tolerance, and charity. Dewar’s openness, her passion, and her commitment to inclusiveness did much to counter opposition, but did not convince everyone.
There were also questions relating to politics and political allegiances. If some people objected to the Southeast Asian refugees because they were xenophobic, others supported the refugees because of their anti-Communist views. Right-wing columnist Barbara Amiel, for example, wrote about “the Asian holocaust” and talked of the “brutal expulsion” carried on by the Vietnamese government and about “genocide.”
Dewar was, as we’ve seen, a staunch New Democrat. Barbara Amiel made an unlikely political bedfellow. But Dewar ignored this. What she saw were the drowning, desperate people, rather than the wider politics. The fleeing Southeast Asians needed shelter.
That is what she saw and why she acted.
Marion sometimes Dewar described herself as ordinary, and indeed, her response to this crisis was that of an average person. She was horrified by the images she saw.